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Beware! Beware!
With a love for Physics and Chemistry which he inherited from his father who was an engineer in a tea estate in the Nilgiris and with a taste for art bestowed on him by his grandfather who owned the first photo studio in Malabar, Sabu creates reality in plaster of paris, coir fibre and gunny cloth. Sabu's success lies in his creativity in blending fact and fiction and in his perseverance for detail.
'Thenmavin Kombathu', which brought Sabu his first national award for the best art director (in 1994), is a fictitious story. It presents a Utopian village on the Kerala-Karnataka border with a Rajasthani culture. It was the art director's duty to create this village with its unique culture. Sabu says, "To make it real I had to take some liberties. I had to make the entire background colourful."
An Ideal Student Born in 1962, Sabu did his schooling in Kerala and in Coimbatore. Then he got admission for BSc Visual Communication at the Madras School of Arts (1980-85). What is most interesting about this 'studious artisan' is that he earned while he learnt and learnt while he earned. He was self-reliant while doing the course, like Gandhiji's ideal student. He worked as a freelance graphic designer for the Taj Groups, Welcomegroup Hotels and others. After passing the course as the best outgoing student of the year, he continued to freelance. Then he got a chance to assist one of his friends to do art direction for films like 'Daisy' and 'Helicopter'. Later, he did the finishing work for 'Iyer the Great'. Sabu's first independent and full work was for Bharathan's 'Amaram'. After that, he never turned back.
Apart from the two national awards, this visiting lecturer of the Pune Film Institute has bagged many awards like the Kerala State Award for best art director, Filmfare Award and Kerala Film Critics Award etc. Sabu's wife Snehalatha was also a fine arts student. She used to help him in his work, especially in doing research; but now she spends more time taking care of their two daughters - Saumya and Swetha. Sabu says, "I have got more support from Tamils than from Malayalees. If you have talent, the Tamil film industry will absorb you. All have helped me - the industry, people, and journalists. They don't have any linguistic or religious bias".
- Salil Jose Readers' response/inputs can be e-mailed to salil@chennaionline.com.
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These lines from Coleridge's poem 'Kubla Khan' leapt to my mind when I spent almost an hour with art director Sabu Cyril at his residence at Kodambakkam. Maybe, it is the realisation that an art director applies superior imagination to create a semblance of reality that reminded me of the poem.
An art director has a lot of freedom when dealing with a fictitious story. But what about doing a period film? "One has to do much research; one has to adhere to facts which don't exist now." Sabu is equally adept at this too. That is why he got his second national award (in 1995) when recreated the background of a bygone era for 'Kalapani'. He did a lot of research on the social and cultural aspects of the British Raj in India, especially those in the
Andamans.
He has handled art direction for more than 60 feature films including 'Hey! Ram', 'Citizen' 'Pukaar' and 'Kakkakuyil'. Moreover, TV serials like 'The Bible' and 'Kanda Puranam' and more than 400 ad films are there to his credit.
Who will fail to support an artist who creates the semblance of reality with perfection even to the minutest detail? Is there anybody who thought that the life-size model of a shark, which Sabu made for 'Amaram', was not real? Can anybody believe that the Chottanikkara Bhagavathi temple that he/she has seen in 'Advaitham' is not real?
Well, this is Sabu Cyril; he 'would build that dome in air'.
